The benefits of a 3-2-1 backup strategy

The idea behind a 3-2-1 backup strategy is to benefit from added data security by having at least three copies of your data – 2 local copies of the data that are stored on two different media or devices, and at least 1 backup copy offsite.

This strategy proposes that you have the following as a minimum:

One local copy is the data itself – the primary data

A second copy also locally stored but on a different medium or device

A third copy backed up at a different location online or in the cloud

How it works

It is important to have at least one other onsite copy of your primary data on another medium or device as if there is a failure on one of the devices, then the other is easily accessible with all the data intact.

Use different storage types for both data sets – for example, store one on an internal hard disk drive and another on a different storage device or server, such as an external hard disk or flash drive, NAS device, file server network share and so on.

However, what if something goes wrong that affects both copies of your onsite data - your primary data and the local backup – such as fire, flooding or even theft?

That’s where the third, offsite copy comes in: As long as this offsite copy is synced regularly – and therefore contains up-to-date copies of your data – your risks of data loss are greatly reduced should anything at all happen to all your onsite copies. You can choose to store your offsite copies using drive-swapping, or directly on Azure Cloud Storage, or alternatively to an Altaro Offsite Server on a secondary site (this can also be installed on a VM running in AWS or Google cloud).

How Altaro VM Backup helps

Altaro VM Backup facilitates 3-2-1 backup by supporting multiple backup media types, and by supporting offsite backups over WAN, Internet, LAN and a local connection. Altaro also provides direct offsite backups to Azure by supporting Microsoft Azure Cloud Storage Accounts and enables backing up to a VM on AWS or Google Storage through its offsite server.